Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Parlon)

I am pleased to introduce the Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003 to Seanad Éireann. The Bill has been amended in Dáil Éireann and I will draw Senators' attention to these amendments when I describe the Bill in detail.

The Bill is an important step in the reform of the public service. Our public service has a major role to play in the economic and social life of the country. To fulfil that role effectively requires that a modern and flexible recruitment system be put in place. The systems which will be established on the enactment of the Bill are essential to the wider modernisation programme set out in the strategic management initiative and in Sustaining Progress.

The human resources management working group, a cross-departmental body established under the SMI, recommended to the Government that the structures governing the recruitment of civil servants should be reformed. In particular, it was considered that there should be an option for public service bodies to recruit directly from the labour market. Currently, the Civil Service and the Garda Síochána are required to recruit through the Civil Service commissioners. Innovations in the management of public service organisations will be enhanced if the recruitment system works in support of those changes. The measures in the Bill introduce a significant new element of flexibility into the recruitment system. As a direct consequence of this Bill, public service organisations will be able to recruit the staff they need, when and where they are needed.

The measures will also ensure that the best people are recruited by requiring that best human resources and recruitment practices will be observed at all times. The institutional arrangements contained in the Bill are specifically designed to ensure that recruitment procedures are in line with best practice and will remain so as this evolves. The measures in the Bill are part of the strategic approach to the management of human resources in the Civil Service and in the other public service organisations to which it will apply. The Bill is not an isolated initiative and it must be seen in the broad context of public service reform. It is a significant element of the programme of public service modernisation which was agreed with the public service unions in Sustaining Progress. The public service unions were fully consulted about these measures and they agreed to the introduction of the Bill in Sustaining Progress. The changes being introduced are another sign that the benchmarking agreement implemented in Sustaining Progress has produced real, practical changes in the way the public service operates.

The Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission and its staff have performed an important role over the years. The efficiency and probity with which the commissioners have carried out their work has been a major factor in creating civil and public services which has allowed the State to develop and prosper. There have been many examples abroad where public confidence in the institutions of Government was undermined in part because of a failure to maintain the probity of the public appointments system. It is to the credit of the commissioners that this did not happen in Ireland and, moreover, that there has never been even the slightest suspicion that the system could be compromised. This is a major achievement and it is right to acknowledge it as the torch passes to the Commission for Public Service Appointments.

It is essential that all institutions adapt and change to take account of the new challenges facing them. We know that the LAC was established at a time when the public service was smaller and was expected to deal with a much narrower range of functions. As society has evolved, the roles and functions of the civil and public services have also evolved. In recent years, the commission has been actively restructuring and refocusing its resources to ensure that it is best placed to provide a modern and expanded recruitment service to all its clients in the public service. In addition, it has been providing a range of services outside its traditional, more restricted remit. This Bill will enhance and accelerate this programme of change.

The evolution of the civil and public services demands that we change the way we manage our human resources in the Civil Service. It means giving Secretaries General and Departments the ability to manage their areas of responsibility more effectively, while maintaining the high standards of probity and the levels of expertise established by the Civil Service commissioners. In recent years, it became clear that the public appointments system needed greater levels of flexibility to meet modern labour market conditions. On occasion, the Civil Service found it difficult to recruit the staff it needed because of labour market pressures. It is imperative that the public service is best positioned to exploit whatever flexibilities are required in the recruitment environment. We must ensure that the new recruitment processes presented here will ensure maximum efficiency and eliminate any scope for bottlenecks. No organisation can allow itself to be put in the position of being unable to recruit, in a timely fashion, the staff it needs to carry out its work. The reforms proposed in the Bill are designed to modernise the recruitment system by allowing public service bodies to recruit directly and quickly under a licensing system which will guarantee good practice.

The point has been made that the independence and probity of recruitment to the public service must be safeguarded at all costs. I know from personal experience, and as a public representative, that it is widely accepted that an application for a post in the civil or public services will be treated in a fair and impartial manner. In Ireland, people have confidence that, following the selection process, the best people are appointed to jobs. In any reform of the recruitment system, it is essential that the public trust established by the Civil Service commissioners over the years is maintained. The Government is determined to make certain that this public confidence in the probity of the system will not be undermined.

As I outline the details of the Bill, I ask Senators to bear in mind that many, if not all, of the new institutional arrangements have been designed to ensure that this key public value of probity is preserved. At present, recruitment to the Civil Service and the Garda Síochána is carried out by the Civil Service commissioners. Recruitment to senior posts in the local authorities and the health boards is carried out by the Local Appointments Commission. The Bill will repeal the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956 and amend the legislation relating to the Local Appointments Commission. The Bill proposes to create two new bodies, the Commission for Public Service Appointments and the Public Appointments Service.

The Commission for Public Service Appointments will become the principal regulator for public service recruitment. The commission will set standards for recruitment to the Civil Service and the public service and will monitor compliance with those standards. While initially the commission will broadly oversee the same range of recruitment as the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission, it is intended that provisions to extend its remit to cover the full range of public service recruitment will be implemented in due course.

In accordance with the policy of devolution of authority, public service bodies regulated by the commission will be allowed to undertake their own recruitment. This is a departure from the current system. It will be a matter for the Garda Commissioner and the Secretary General of each Department to decide whether to avail of the opportunity to apply for a licence to recruit. If they decide to apply for licences, they will be able to recruit directly from the labour market without the requirement to use the centralised recruitment agency as an intermediary while following the standards laid down by the commission. However, the option of using the services of the centralised agency will continue to be available.

The Commission for Public Service Appointments will licence public service bodies to recruit, according to clear codes of practice, on its own behalf, or with the assistance of private sector recruitment agencies specifically approved by the commission. The commission will have the authority to alter or to revoke a licence, or to issue directions to a licence holder. These arrangements are designed to maintain the probity of the recruitment process. The Bill also provides for the establishment of the Public Appointments Service, PAS, as the centralised recruitment body for the public service. The professionalism and expertise in public sector recruitment that has been developed within the Office of the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commissioners will now reside within the PAS. This body will continue to play a critical and vital role in the future of public sector recruitment and in the future development of HRM across the public service.

The Bill is arranged in eight Parts and there are two Schedules. Part 1 provides for the dissolution of the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission. It also allows the Minister for Finance to appoint a day on which the Commission for Public Service Appointments and the Public Appointments Service will come into being and determines which public service appointments are covered by the legislation. The Department of Finance and the Civil Service Commission are meeting to plan the establishment of the new bodies. In order to establish the new bodies, the financial and staffing resources currently allocated to the Civil Service Commission will be divided appropriately. A director will be appointed to head the Office of the Commission and an adequate number of staff of the Civil Service Commission will be seconded to the Commission for Public Service Appointments to set that body on a firm foundation, although the commission may opt to appoint its own staff in the long term. The remainder of the staff of the Civil Service Commission will be transferred to the Public Appointments Service. It is intended that arrangements will be put in place to allow the Minister for Finance to establish the new bodies shortly after the Bill is enacted.

On establishment day, appointments to the Garda Síochána, to most positions in the Civil Service and to certain managerial, professional and technical posts in local authorities, health boards and vocational education committees will be covered. Section 6 permits the Minister for Finance to make orders which will extend the application of the Bill beyond these appointments. However, certain appointments are excluded from the scope of the legislation and the Minister cannot make an order bringing them within the remit of the Bill. These include appointments made by the Government or President, appointments to posts established under the Constitution and the appointment of special advisers. A number of other appointments are excluded but the Minister may make orders bringing them within the remit of the Bill. It is the Minister's intention to ensure that in time the overwhelming majority of public service posts will be subject to the system of regulation established by the Bill.

There have been comments that the Government was using this Bill to gain power to appoint its advisers to permanent and pensionable posts in the Civil Service. I assure Members that this allegation is utterly without foundation. To put the matter beyond doubt, the Bill was amended in the Dáil to exclude the appointment of special advisers from the scope of the legislation. The effect of the amendment to section 7 is to ensure that special advisers cannot be appointed by Ministers, or by Government, to established positions in the Civil Service unless there are further amendments to this Bill and to the Ethics in Public Office Act. That Act requires that advisers lose office at the same time as the Ministers they serve. Taken together, these measures ensure that special advisers will continue to leave the Civil Service at the same time as their Ministers leave office.

I have already outlined the main provisions relating to the Commission for Public Service Appointments as set out in Part 2 of the Bill. The Bill was amended to provide that the Commission will be composed of five ex officio members, namely the Ceann Comhairle, the Secretary General to the Government, the Secretary General, Public Service Management and Development in the Department of Finance, the Chairman of the Standards in Public Office Commission and the Ombudsman.

Section 12, as initiated, provided that only three members of the commission would be commissioners ex officio. It also provided that up to six other commissioners may be appointed by Government. To lay to rest any concern that the power of appointment to the commission might be open to question, section 12 was amended to add two more ex officio members and to delete the Government’s power to appoint members to the commission. Consequently, the commission will be composed entirely of ex officio members and the Government will be unable to appoint additional members. These measures are intended to place the commission on the most secure footing and to dissolve any suspicion that any influence may be brought to bear on the appointment of the commission. I suggest to Senators that this is the clearest indication of the Government’s commitment to maintaining the highest standards of integrity in public service recruitment.

The Bill also requires that the commission establish standards of probity, merit, equity and fairness to govern the recruitment and selection of appointees and will publish these standards as codes of practice. It will grant recruitment licences but it can also issue instructions to licence holders and revoke licences, where appropriate. The commission will report to the Oireachtas every year. It will prepare and publish codes of practice setting out the principles to be observed by licence holders in recruitment to the public service. Each code will include instructions on probity and fairness, the need to ensure that candidates are selected on the basis of merit, the protection of the public interest, the implementation of best practice and the general procedures to be adopted to deal with grievances and complaints brought forward by candidates.

The commission may consolidate, revoke or amend a code as it sees fit. Except in the case of the Public Appointments Service, which will hold a recruitment licence on the establishment day, recruitment licences will be granted for the conduct of recruitment processes only where codes of practice for the posts concerned have been published. This will ensure all recruitment processes are governed by codes of practice approved by the commission. Candidates will be selected for appointment in the order of merit as determined by the recruitment process.

As an additional safeguard, this Part includes provisions, which require persons who have knowledge of an attempt to influence a recruitment process to inform the commission in order that it may take appropriate action. The commission may investigate the exercise of recruitment functions by any licence holder or recruitment agency. Licence holders, recruitment agencies and any other person who may have information which is materially relevant to the exercise of functions under the Bill must co-operate with an investigation and it will be an offence to obstruct an investigation. A person found guilty of the offence will be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding €3,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both.

While this Part of the Bill gives the commission responsibility for setting and safeguarding standards of probity in recruitment, it also provides them with the powers necessary to enforce standards. Taken together, these responsibilities and powers will guarantee the high standards of probity which have been the hallmark of the Civil Service commissioners and the Local Appointments commissioners will also characterise recruitment under a licence issued by the Commission for Public Service Appointments. As I said before, probity is essential. It is not the Government's intention to introduce flexibility at the cost of lowering standards and undermining public confidence. I am satisfied the Bill strengthens and protects the high standards that have been established in this area.

The number of recruitment agencies in Ireland has increased greatly in recent years. These agencies have a good deal to offer public sector organisations in carrying out their recruitment. The Government wants to provide public service bodies with the opportunity to draw on this expertise in identifying and selecting the best people for a particular job. Accordingly, provision is being made in the Bill for licence holders to obtain assistance from these professional agencies. The Minister for Finance listened to the representations made about the practical involvement of private sector agencies in public service recruitment and agrees the role of private sector recruitment agencies should be limited to assisting licence holders. While he believes these agencies can and should perform a wider set of functions, he proposed an amendment which will require the licence holder to retain sole responsibility for the final selection of candidates for appointment or placement on a panel for appointment. This is reasonable clarification of the policy approach already in the Bill. The amendment met the concerns expressed without compromising the need to give flexibility to licence holders in recruitment. It will also help to secure the probity of the recruitment process by placing responsibility for final selection of candidates unambiguously on the shoulders of the licence holder.

Part 3 deals with the Public Appointments Service. The Public Appointments Service, while retaining all the expertise and professionalism of the existing Civil Service Commission, will be established in a manner that will allow it to be more responsive and to compete more effectively in the jobs market than was the case heretofore. The new PAS will be well placed to deliver a wide range of services in the area of recruitment and selection and to support client organisations across the civil and public service through best practice approaches in the area of human resource management.

The Public Appointment Service will be independent in the exercise of its functions, which will include acting as the centralised recruitment, assessment and selection body for the Civil Service and public service bodies where it is requested to do so; ensuring the commission's codes of practice are followed in the recruitment process, undertaking other selection competitions, including promotion competitions and competitions to posts in organisations outside the Civil Service where requested by the relevant Minister; and providing expert services on recruitment, assessment and selection matters.

The board of the PAS will consist of a chairperson, the chief executive of the PAS and seven ordinary members. Its functions will include considering and approving plans and strategic objectives put forward by the chief executive, monitoring the PAS in the exercise of its functions and ensuring appropriate review procedures are put in place for recruitment and promotion procedures. Throughout the Bill, the Government is determined to uphold the probity of the system. It is a requirement that the board members must not participate in political activity. This is essential to ensure there will be no suspicion of political interference in the work of the PAS.

Part 4 sets out the provisions relating to recruitment licences. The commission will consider applications for recruitment licences from the chief executive of any public service body which is within the remit of the commission. Recruitment licences may be granted for particular positions and each licence will also include the terms and conditions upon which the licence is held. Licence holders may delegate all or part of the task of recruitment to the PAS. In those circumstances, the chief executive of the PAS, rather than the licence holder, will be responsible for adherence to the terms of the licence. The commission may issue instructions and advice to licence holders in situations where it forms the view that an aspect of the recruitment process has been or is likely to be compromised. The commission may amend or revoke a licence if necessary. Where it is deemed necessary to revoke a licence and a recruitment process is already in train, the commission will have the power to make transitional arrangements.

Part 5 sets out the obligations applying to candidates in respect of recruitment and selection procedures. Candidates taking part in competitions within the civil and public services have important obligations, which the Government wants to set down in statute. This Part of the Bill prohibits in any public service recruitment, selection or promotion competition the provision of false information, canvassing, bribery, personation and any interference with the competition. A person engaging in such activities is guilty of an offence. If a person who has been found guilty of such an offence was or is a candidate at a competition, he or she will be disqualified as a candidate. If he or she has been appointed, he or she will forfeit the appointment.

Part 6 deals with selection for promotion and provides that the Minister for Finance, following consultation with any relevant Minister, may ask the PAS to hold promotion competitions for civil servants or other public servants. Part 7 sets out the powers and responsibilities of the Minister for Finance and other Ministers in respect of recruitment and selection.

Part 8 contains technical provisions dealing with transitional arrangements, repeals of legislation and consequential amendments of legislation. Anything commenced but not completed before the establishment day by the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission may be continued and completed after that day by the PAS if it relates to the conduct of a competition or by the commission in all other cases.

The First Schedule to the Bill lists a number of scheduled occupations. Recruitment to such occupations is outside the remit of the Bill, although the Minister for Finance may make an order bringing them within its remit at some future point. The Second Schedule to the Bill sets out consequential repeals, revocations and amendments to Acts and statutory instruments.

As I said at the outset, the Bill will introduce important reforms in recruitment to the civil and public services. The management of recruitment in any organisation can affect every aspect of its work. It can affect the way its customers see it and it will affect the way its employees work. The argument that an organisation's culture can be shaped positively if its recruitment process is handled properly is particularly relevant to public service organisations.

The civil and public services advise the Government and implement its policies on behalf of the community. Public service recruitment must continue to be open and fair, and to be perceived as such by the public. All members of the community who apply for a post in the public service must feel that their applications will be treated without prejudice. If this were ever to change, the effect on our public service would be serious. It would alter the way our public and political institutions operate and it would change the nature of public life for the worse.

The Government is determined to continue to modernise the recruitment system, but it will not undermine the trust and confidence, which the public has in public service recruitment. The civil and public services must be in a position to recruit the staff they need quickly and efficiently. They need to be able to compete with the private sector in selecting their staff from the best available people. Without the ability to act in this way, the quality of service available to the public will suffer. The Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003 meets these requirements. The amendments made to the Bill in the Dáil copperfasten the integrity of public service recruitment and address the specific concerns, which have been raised. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Higgins

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. When I first read the Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003, I was reminded of the adage "If it ain't broke, then why fix it?" The current system of appointment, introduced in the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956, has stood the State in good stead.

As the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, said, nobody can point a finger at the Civil Service commissioners. Nobody can deny that they have acted with complete probity and impartiality. There has been no need to state in advertisements, as one might have seen in an advertisement for a position for a post with a VEC a number of years ago, that canvassing will disqualify. The merest hint of representation on behalf of a candidate, covertly or otherwise, quite rightly leads to automatic disqualification. The Local Appointments commissioners operate to the same high standards. It is generally accepted that the two bodies, as well as being absolutely independent, have appointed candidates of a satisfactory quality.

What is wrong with the existing regime and the existing structures? Why should the two existing bodies be abolished and replaced by two new regimes? The Minister of State has defended the Bill by saying that it will introduce greater speed and flexibility:

As Irish society has evolved, the role and function of the civil and public service has also evolved. In recent years, the commission has been actively restructuring and refocusing its resources to ensure that it is best placed to provide a modern and expanded recruitment service to all its clients in the public service. In addition, it has been providing a range of services outside its traditional, more restricted remit.

It is clear that the commission has considerably expanded its role, has gone outside its traditional remit and has been doing a good job. When I listened to the Minister of State, I was struck by a contrast between his comments and the Bill's explanatory memorandum, which emphasises that "the flexibilities being introduced in this Bill will support the Government in its decentralisation programme". The Minister of State did not mention decentralisation, however.

I do not understand how the Bill can be said to provide for greater flexibility, other than by empowering the Secretaries General of Departments, or the heads of other offices, to bypass the proposed Public Appointments Service. Such officials will be able to apply for recruitment licences to allow them to recruit their own staff directly. I am not sure if that is necessarily a good thing. What is the merit of this measure? Will it not lead to a diminution of the uniformity of the standards which apply under the existing Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission? It was right that we paid glowing tributes earlier to officials from the Departments of Finance and the Taoiseach, who did Trojan work on the new treaty and the appointment of the new President of the European Commission.

Dr. Mansergh

We also paid tribute to the staff of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Higgins

Indeed. The people in question were recruited under the old system, which has stood the test of time. The Government plans to change the entire system, however.

The Bill's explanatory memorandum mentions decentralisation, but the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, did not refer to it in his speech. His failure to refer to the decentralisation programme represents an acknowledgement that it is doubtful that it will happen at all. The programme will not proceed not because it is a bad thing, but because of the ham-fisted and gauche manner in which it was announced and handled. When the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, announced in his budget four years ago that the Government intended to pursue a programme of decentralisation, he said that every public servant whose job was capable of being decentralised would be decentralised. The announcement was welcomed, particularly by Fine Gael. Nothing happened for some time, however, despite repeated queries from my party and others. The rabbit was finally plucked from the hat in the run-up to the European and local elections, when it was announced that over 10,000 jobs would be relocated in over 50 locations.

A glaring deficiency in the decentralisation programme, which was pointed out last year by Fine Gael, is that many of the places chosen for decentralisation were not designated as hubs or gateways in the national spatial strategy. There was understandable elation in the 53 locations that were chosen, two of which, Claremorris and Knock Airport, are within minutes of my home. Secure public service jobs will bring considerable benefits to the economies of such regions. Despite the Minister for Finance's reassurances and assertions, it is obvious the decentralisation timetable cannot be met.

In his rush to provide political kudos for his party and its public representatives in the Dáil and Seanad and at local government level, the Minister has overlooked a number of factors. First, from the point of view of the standard and quality of public service, we simply cannot dislodge 10,000 public servants from their centrally located Dublin offices and transplant them within a pressurised timeframe to 53 disparate locations without adversely affecting the efficient delivery of the service. Second, the long-sought interaction, cohesion and overlap among what were, until now, straitjacketed and singly focused Departments will be set back years. The failure of the Minister to enter into negotiations with the various Civil Service representative bodies in advance of the announcement has meant that the proposal is doomed to failure.

I welcome, at least in regard to this measure, the fact that the Minister and his Department had the courtesy to enter into dialogue with the public service unions and get their clearance on this matter. It is incomprehensible, however, in terms of decentralisation, that any Minister for Finance could not have foreseen the public service furore that would ensue. First, there is the overwhelming resistance on the part of the vast majority of the public service to being shunted to various parts of the country to which they do not want to go or with which they have no association. Second, the Minister is talking about moving people from a Department in which they have worked and for which they have been trained for 20 to 25 years to entirely new Departments with which they are not familiar. Third, there are the human factors. For example, if a husband is working in one Department and his spouse or partner is working in another Department, how can they both be accommodated within a new relocated Department, that is if they want to move in the first place?

Mr. Parlon

That is if they are married in the first place.

Mr. Higgins

What if the husband has a senior position within the public service and his wife is working in a bank, and both salaries are needed to pay a mortgage? How can the Minister reach some compromise that will make the move acceptable to both of them? The same applies in regard to a civil servant married to a teacher. How can she be guaranteed a job in the local secondary, community or vocational school in, say, Claremorris, County Mayo?

The figures illustrate the reality that the vast majority of public servants do not want to move because of the manner in which this is being handled. They live in Dublin. They are settled in Dublin. They have a whole social network in Dublin. They own houses and they have mortgages. They have children attending primary and secondary school and third level colleges.

Has the Minister not listened, for example, to the reaction of the plethora of his own defeated local authority candidates who went on the Joe Duffy radio programme on two successive days and emphasised, particularly in Dublin, that the negative factor that impacted on the Government's performance was the fact that there was no consultation regarding decentralisation and that people would be dislodged willy-nilly?

The Minister has failed to appreciate that we are not talking about dislodging 10,000 public servants. We are talking about dislodging 40,000 people, between spouses and children. I am all for decentralisation. It is a great idea but this has been bungled. It is too much, too soon, and it is unplanned. I want the scheme to work properly but it has not been planned. It was an election rabbit that, from the point of view of the Government, has had more negatives than positives.

The justification for this Bill is in the first six or seven lines, namely, to support the Government's programme of decentralisation. It is putting the cart before the horse.

Dr. Mansergh

This is important legislation and important public service reform. It is clear that it has been thoroughly discussed and considered within the Department of Finance but also in consultation with the social partners. What we are being presented with is well thought out and considered legislation which has broad consensus.

I fully agree with the emphasis on retaining the achievements of impartiality, integrity, lack of bias and lack of interference with the public service, which goes back to the 1920s. It is vital to preserve and in this regard, section 13(1)(a) provides that the commission is to establish standards of probity, merit, equity, fairness and other principles as it considers appropriate to be followed in the public interest in the recruitment and selection of persons for positions in the Civil Service as a public service body. The importance of that cannot be emphasised too strongly or too often and not just from a moral or even a public interest point of view. International experience shows that if a country does not have integrity in its public service, it has negative economic and social consequences for the country concerned.

We should not kid ourselves that there are no dangers out there. From time to time all of us who are public representatives have been approached about people who are seeking appointments, whether it is in the Civil Service or the local service, and one has to explain to them that one is not allowed to canvass on their behalf and that if one even attempted to do it, it could do them serious harm; at very best it would have no effect. I have to say, however, that many members of the public do not believe that when they are told it. That emphasis is vital, and there is a strong provision in section 14 about improper interference with the recruitment process, which I support.

There is an ambiguity in section 15 in that it appears the offence is to obstruct an investigation into interference. It is not clear, from reading the legislation, whether the actual attempt to interfere with recruitment is an offence or merely that it is an offence to obstruct the investigation into it. I did not notice this point being discussed in the Dáil — perhaps it was — but it is an ambiguity I would like to see cleared up.

There was some debate, which I do not think we will re-engage in here, on suggestions or fears that special advisers could somehow be parachuted into the permanent Civil Service. That charge was convincingly refuted. In any case, even if there were an attempt to create a back door it simply would not wash because the permanent public and Civil Service would rightly resist any such attempt. I have been in both and I see it from both sides of the argument. Permanent civil servants are recruited through competition on merit while the qualifications of special advisers are known to the person who appoints them. It is right to keep that clear division and not to mix them up. It is a pity the Bill does not seek to limit or regulate the appointments of special advisers. Appointments are normally Cabinet decisions at the formation of each Government. However, the early 1990s, with an element of party patronage, saw a tendency to appoint too many advisers. This system has its merits but should be kept tight so as to ensure every ministerial office is not stuffed with large numbers of advisers.

Senator Higgins questioned the rationale behind the Bill. However, we live in a different economy where vacancies in the Civil Service arise with greater frequency than in the past. The fast turnover of staff in certain areas of employment makes it difficult for the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission to keep up and have people ready to fill vacancies as they arise. This Bill imports more flexibility, under tight regulation, to allow Departments and State agencies to recruit directly.

The question of an overall Civil Service recruitment policy was not raised in the Minister of State's speech. Bans and embargoes that were employed during economically difficult times tended to be terribly inflexible and were crude instruments utterly unsuited to the situations of certain agencies. Some State agencies fully covered their costs through fees charged, but were nonetheless prevented from recruiting when they needed to do so.

Senator Higgins raised the decentralisation programme and I am interested to know how it will integrate with this new public service recruitment policy. Decentralisation under the programme for Government is justified on its own merits and will also further justify this Bill. Contrary to Senator Higgins, I believe the Government remains fully committed to the programme. It must be achieved by negotiation, discussion and consent, and not made compulsory. However, many commentators and politicians from the Dublin area believe that most power and wealth should be concentrated in the greater Dublin region. With modern technology, that is not necessary. These voices can at best be described as conservative and, at worst, reactionary. For example, on Report Stage in the Dáil, one Deputy claimed this Bill and the decentralisation programme as "the single greatest act of administrative and political vandalism undertaken by any Government in the past 50 years". He continued in words reminiscent of the fictional Prince Charles in Private Eye: “we are watching the destruction of one of the greatest institutions of the State, the Civil Service.” I regard that as complete and utter conservative rubbish. Our great public service will adapt.

In the Department of Foreign Affairs, which I belonged to, civil servants are shifted from capital to capital around the world. Gardaí have to move at regular intervals. I admit that this can be problematic for young gardaí but it is a problem shared with married couples with children who may not be working in the same location. Everyone has to work these logistical difficulties out for themselves. I regret the negative attitude in principle to the decentralisation programme. The Member I earlier quoted is a former Taoiseach, for whom I have great respect and acknowledge his great contribution to Europe. However, he insisted that the European Veterinary Office be decentralised to a village in County Meath, while most working at the office were resistant to such a move. While he remained committed to European Union decentralisation to Grange in County Meath, he describes the Government's programme as an appalling act of vandalism and destruction of one of the great institutions of State. Can we have some consistency in criticisms of the programme? The Deputy, as Minister for Finance in the early 1980s, was responsible for cancelling two modest decentralisation programmes.

Many Fine Gael Deputies and Senators, including the parliamentary party chairman who comes from County Tipperary, are committed to the decentralisation. However, commentators tell us that it is a great idea in theory but not in practice. Is it right that up to 90% of all Irish air traffic goes through Dublin Airport? I have an open mind on Aer Rianta but should we not distribute economic activity more equitably around the State? Will Members of more leftward-looking parties agree that the redistribution of wealth is one of their fundamental ideas rather than the concentration of wealth in certain places? I look forward to hearing the Minister of State outline the relationship of this Bill to the decentralisation programme. It has benefits for both Dublin and the rest of the country. The Government should not abandon it, let alone dilute its commitment to it, just because of teething problems.

Mr. Quinn

I welcome the Minister of State but I am in two minds as to whether I should welcome the Bill. Since the 1920s, a system has been in place that will now be changed. The debates in the Dáil and here will be useful in questioning the need for this change.

When I became chairman of An Post in the early 1980s I was told the big difficulty with civil servants was they were so conservative that they would not be able to adapt to changes in a commercial state-sponsored body. The opposite happened. Those who were conservative as civil servants were, when released from the shackles of the Civil Service, competent and capable in adjusting to the marketplace.

It seems strange to initiate a root and branch reform of a system that has served the country so well over the past 80 years and I question whether it needs to be changed. The Bill makes it possible to make public service appointments at the level of individual Departments and agencies rather than centrally. That might be no bad thing. I am generally in favour of delegating authority as far down the line as possible. Most of would probably agree with that approach. It may well be that individual Departments know their own business best and are thus in the right position to choose the right people to work for that business. There is, however, a danger that when one repeatedly replicates any function one ends up re-inventing the wheel on a systematic basis. Doing business at the local level tends to cut one off from a pool of central expertise built up over the years. This cutting off happens in both directions. Individual Departments will not be able to draw on a central pool of expertise nor to contribute to a central pool. What lessons they learn will tend to stay with themselves rather than be disseminated as best practice across the public service.

What is true of expertise is also true of reputation. The Bill contains provisions aimed at ensuring that this delegated responsibility is delivered to the highest standards. I hope that the aspirations of the provisions will be fully realised and that they will not turn out to be meaningless rhetoric. However, even if the standards are maintained under the new system and the best existing practice is disseminated through the public service, one cannot ensure the same for reputation. One cannot transfer a reputation for integrity and independence by means of a law passed in this House. A reputation is a most valuable asset but not one that can be treated like a property. We can transfer the mechanics of making appointments in any way we like but we cannot similarly transfer a reputation. It will be up to each Department or agency to build up its own reputation for fairness and integrity in making appointments. A reputation can only be earned over time and in the nature of things some people will succeed in achieving it better than others. In the short term we will have to live without the benefit of reputation for integrity and fairness. Even in the long term, when the Departments and the agencies have built up their own reputations we will have to settle for a more spotty and uneven reputation than the one currently enjoyed.

All of this makes me wonder why we are setting off on this route. What is so wrong with the existing system that it must be reformed in the radical way being talked of? What is so urgent about the problem that it must be given the priority accorded it in the Government's legislative programme? The answer to the latter question is clear. It is decentralisation. There is no secret about this. In publishing this Bill the Government made it clear that its passing would facilitate the decentralisation process. This makes me more rather than less cautious about whether we should take this route. It is clear that the Government is contemplating not merely removing many of our civil servants from one place to another. The need for this Bill arises from the Government's realisation that in order to make decentralisation work it will be necessary to carry out a major shake-up in the personnel of each of the Departments to be moved. If the Government did not anticipate this need, there can be no doubt about it now in view of the quite negative reactions of the civil servants to the proposal.

Whether the Government realised it from the beginning, it is now clear that Departments to be moved outside Dublin will be staffed by a set of people radically different to those who now staff them. This would not matter greatly if the new staff were all at relatively low level but it is clear that the further up the hierarchy one goes in each Department, the less prepared the civil servants are to move out of Dublin. If the Government gets its way, in addition to moving Departments out of Dublin it will also have to replace most of the top management in each Department.

What concerns me is the effect on what may be termed the collective memory of each Department. In any organisation, particularly in the private sector but also in the public sector, there is a great deal of ongoing expertise which is found not in the files but in the brains of the top and middle management. It comes from experience. This is rarely an issue, because in the ordinary way those people are not replaced at the same time. Many of them stay on to ensure continuity on a rolling basis. My experience from business is that it is hard to hold on to that, and when one loses that knowledge, memory and expertise it is very hard to replace it.

As we learned from the widespread downsizing of organisations in the 1980s and 1990s, it can have a devastating effect on an organisation's efficiency if a large number of people are either moved or replaced. The collective memory of an organisation is impaired because there is too great a change of personnel to ensure the necessary continuity. This is what worries me about the decentralisation proposal. It is not the only aspect which causes me concern but it is the main one. The approach seems to be based on the assumption that one can replace top and middle management on a wholesale basis without any detrimental effect on the organisation's ability to successfully carry out its mission. History, including in commercial business, indicates otherwise. I doubt that enough thought has yet been given to this aspect of the change and I remain to be convinced that the present decentralisation proposals are a good idea.

By extension, given that the Bill is largely driven by the decentralisation proposals I question that it is the wisest way to proceed. My greatest fear is that with the best will in the world we may end up destroying some of the most valuable aspects of our public administration. I have seen this happen in business, in commercial terms and in other organisations. We must consider the collective wisdom and knowledge involved. In our business we call it "sitting with Nelly". One of the ways one learns a business from the outset is to sit beside a "mother hen" or buddy from whom one assimilates knowledge. Whatever happens at the lower level, it is essential we do not lose that at middle and top management levels. I urge the Minister of State to consider deeply the implications of what we are discussing, not just in terms of decentralisation but with regard to the changes proposed here.

Mr. McDowell

I broadly welcome this Bill, though with reservations. Senator Higgins noted that the Minister of State's speech does not explicitly refer to decentralisation. It is interesting that his speech in the Dáil did so, at least initially. He has kicked off a lengthy debate about decentralisation in the other House which he wants to avoid in this House. He has not managed to succeed in that so far and I will not help him.

An explicit aim of the Bill is to facilitate recruitment at local level and therefore presumably to staff offices in the 53 different locations set out by the Minister for Finance last December in the decentralisation programme announced in the budget. That is worrying with regard to a range of policy issues, some of which I will mention.

In response to Senator Mansergh's emotional intervention on behalf of provincial Ireland, I regret we have not had enough of the opposite. I regret there have not been enough people who represent Dublin constituencies, or aspire to represent Dublin constituencies, speaking up for our city. I understand perfectly why Deputies and Senators from rural areas want to bring jobs from Dublin down the country. This is partly because people from Dublin do not want to go there and why should they? Many people have established lifestyles in Dublin, including jobs, spouses' jobs, mortgages, houses and schools for their children, but they also have a level of choice in their lifestyle which they simply would not have in provincial Ireland. Dublin offers people a choice of where their children go to school, what they do in their leisure time and whether they wish to go to the theatre, cinema or whatever, compared to many of these God awful places down the country where all one has is a choice of dingy pubs.

Dr. Mansergh

There is a fine quality of life to be had in many parts of the country. The Senator should not call them God awful places.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator McDowell, without interruption.

Mr. McDowell

People do not choose to go to many of the 53 towns and villages listed by the Minister of State so the Government has decided as a matter of policy to relocate civil servants to these places to get more votes. While I understand why it is doing so, I am deeply opposed to it.

As a Dubliner, I have no hesitation saying I understand why people like living here. I do not think there is anything wrong with living here or having Civil Service jobs here. I understand why people from the country want to stay here. Perhaps too little of that argument has been made by those of us who represent Dublin constituencies. Those on the Government benches will be aware that many civil servants living in Dublin feel under-represented, or not represented, by what is being said on the issue in these Houses in recent months by those of us on the Opposition benches genuflecting towards decentralisation and giving way to our rural colleagues. These people want us to say that they are entitled to their choice of lifestyle and to maintain their jobs where they now have them. I would like to raise my voice in support of these people who do not feel they are being properly represented in the debate.

It is important to address the issue at a policy level. There are real difficulties for the decision-making process in what is being proposed. I do not have a problem with relocating an administrative office down the country, wherever it might be, assuming that the IT connections and communications generally are good. However, there are problems for the decision making process. There is a need for people making decisions to talk to each other not just over the telephone or by e-mail. There is a need for senior policy makers to be in constant contact with people within their own Department, or people within their section of the Department. There is also a need for senior civil servants to be in constant touch with people at a similar level in other Departments. This inevitably will be weakened if different Departments or different parts of different Departments are located in different parts of the country.

There is a particular problem in regard to issues relating to different Departments, where different Ministers have responsibility for dealing with, for example, children. We still have not got to grips with this problem. It is 15 years since a Minister of State with responsibility for children was first appointed and there are still teething difficulties in trying to co-ordinate the activities of the three or four different Departments dealing with children's issues. It is not rocket science to project that the problem will get worse in circumstances where individual policy makers, the senior civil servants who deal with the issue, are located in different parts of the country.

Looking benignly at the issue, in many cases it might not make a huge difference if decision makers or senior civil servants in part of a Department are close to the Minister and these Houses and another part of the Department is down the country. Clearly it will make a difference in some areas and the most obvious one is where people have specialised technical skills, which must be located in one place. If we are to take the Government at face value and assume this process will be voluntary, presumably some people with specialised technical skills, who are located in an office in Dublin, will be relocated in Dublin where their technical skills will be lost, if they choose not to go down the country. Presumably it would then be necessary to recruit people with these specialised technical skills who are willing to go down the country. To use Senator Quinn's phrase, this will inevitably involve a loss of institutional memory and a loss of skill. It would also involve unnecessary costs and duplication, which we could do without.

One must wonder whether it is intended to carry out the process in a voluntary fashion. It was clear until a few weeks ago that the Government intended to put the maximum pressure to move on civil servants. I may be misreading the signs, but its willingness to put pressure on civil servants has been diminished somewhat by the experience on the doorsteps over the past couple of months. The result of this may be a much more limited programme, which may not be a bad thing. If we can get a significant group of people from agencies and Departments, which will not involve a significant loss of expertise, to move down the country on a genuinely voluntary basis, no one will raise their voice in opposition. However, if we proceed to transfer all the agencies and Departments to the 53 different locations, the outcome inevitably will be chaotic.

It is a little ironic that this measure is being introduced at a time when it is Government policy to restrict or eliminate recruitment to the Civil Service. It was explicitly stated by the Minister for Finance that he wanted to reduce the numbers in the Civil Service. In that context, it is ironic that a whole new method of recruitment into the Civil Service is being introduced. Central to this is the maintenance of probity, fairness and independence within the Civil Service. If one takes the Bill and the Minister's statements here and in the other House at face value, one would say that is fair enough. However, there are some worrying elements, which the Minister of State has tried to address by way of amendment in at least one area. This relates to delegation and whomever is ultimately responsible for recruitment. If a particular Department or agency gets a licence, it will be entitled to delegate to a private recruitment agency. Most of them will do so because Departments which currently do not recruit are unlikely to set up new recruitment sections.

The constraints and standards set out in the regulation depend on the codes of practice, which are intended to be implemented by the commission. What we are getting now is different from when one agency was responsible for all the recruitment and oversaw the independence that guaranteed probity. We will now have someone regulating a licence holder who will, in turn, delegate to a private recruitment agency. I appreciate what the Minister of State has done in terms of the amendment, but I am not persuaded if he makes the decentralisation argument and says this is being done in Gort, Claremorris or wherever——

Mr. Parlon

One of these God awful places.

Mr. McDowell

For the moment, I would like to be non-specific about the God awful places. If there is a recruitment agency in Gort, Claremorris or wherever, working to a licence holder which may be in Galway or Dublin and which has a code of practice set by the central agency, there are several different layers which do not give me the certainly I currently have, and which all of us share, that the system is being operated without fear or favour and on a truly independent basis. I worry about this aspect because I am not convinced it will work in practice.

I am not sure how the Bill will impact on promotion and transfer within the Civil Service. It appears it is intended that recruitment to the Civil Service will be exclusively at the lower levels such as CO or EO, grades currently directly recruited by the Civil Service Commission. I appreciate this does not sit terribly comfortably with what I said earlier, but on one level that would be a pity because it is necessary to have the flexibility which involves bringing people into the Civil Service at all levels. Sometimes the deficiencies are not at the lower level, where one can usually fill appointments without too much difficulty. There was a difficulty a few years ago, but that is not normally the case. The difficulty normally arises at specialised level, where people with specialised technical skills are needed or, as Senator Mansergh said, where people need to be recruited to the Department of Foreign Affairs where there has been significant expansion in recent years. As I understand it, we do not, for example, recruit at ambassadorial level or decide we want somebody to be the ambassador to Lithuania, Latvia or elsewhere and thereby get somebody who knows those countries well. In so far as we are directly recruiting from the labour market, we could usefully do so at all levels and it is a pity we have not done so.

The Bill has its origins in Sustaining Progress and arguably goes back to Delivering Better Government in the 1990s and the Public Service Management Act which followed that. It is reasonable to ask whether some of the measures introduced six or seven years ago have been effective as they are at least as important as the measures currently being canvassed in this Bill. I am talking, for example, of the right given to Secretaries General to effectively dismiss staff from the Civil Service. While I do not know the figures, I suspect this power is used rarely although I suspect the power to discipline is used more regularly.

None of us wants to see significant numbers dismissed from the Civil Service — far from it. However, we acknowledge there would be a serious effect on morale if a significant number of civil servants believed, as I think they do, that others doing a similar job at the same grade, perhaps at the next table, were under-performing or, in some cases, not performing at all. We have all spoken to civil servants in this position. There is a need for Secretaries General, or perhaps for managers further down the line, to exercise greater discretion and management skills in the way they deal with this.

The flip side of this is offering staff incentives and acknowledging when they perform well, a matter we have discussed for some years. However, it has been introduced only at the highest levels, namely, at Secretary General and assistant secretary general levels. This is a pity. If we cannot take a tougher line with those who are under-performing — I understand why we do not — the least we can do is incentivise those performing well. It is a pity the negotiations which have gone on fitfully over a number of years have been unsuccessful in producing a positive result because it is in everybody's interest that people who perform well are recognised in a tangible way.

There is an interesting argument that the Bill brings to the fore, namely, the nature of the Civil Service we want. Our tradition has been one of employing generalists, those who are flexible and can be moved from Department to Department and will, likely as not, spend most of their careers within the service, getting promoted and going as far they can or want. It is not necessarily a bad thing that there seems to be a shift to bringing in staff on short-term or fixed contracts for particular purposes but there needs to be a balance between the two. There will always be a role for generalists. However, the service needs the facility to contract out and bring in staff for short periods to do particular jobs. Ideally, it also needs some crossover between the two. There should be no reason why generalists cannot do a particular job for three years, for example, and then be moved to another job. There seems to be a sense that if somebody is put into a particular job, they stay there for a long time even if the job is effectively redundant. There is not the flexibility needed in terms of re-appointing staff or allocating them to other jobs, which is a pity. We have not yet got the balance right and I am not persuaded the Bill will help us to do it.

The Bill is on balance positive. There are ways in which it could fail and I worry about some issues, including that of special advisers referred to by Senator Mansergh. However, broadly speaking, it is going in the right direction and I support it.

Mr. O’Toole

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon. I broadly welcome the Bill. I feel a need to discuss decentralisation as the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service was censored from having a debate on it by a recent vote of Government, which was quite appalling. The Minister of State was equally bemused by this, as I put the question to him. He assured me he was quite happy to debate the issue at any stage. While this is not the appropriate time to go into this in great detail, it is important to recognise that decentralisation could go the way of e-voting and dormant accounts, namely, a great idea destroyed in the implementation.

I have listened to the points made about decentralisation. I find myself closer to Senator Mansergh's view on this than that of Senator McDowell.

Mr. McDowell

The Senator betrays his rural origins. Once from the country, always from the country.

Mr. O’Toole

Exactly. However, decentralisation cannot in any principled way be opposed with a safe intellectual argument. I agree with Senator McDowell that the issue is how it is to be implemented and I agree with his use of the word "voluntary". I stated in the House that decentralisation would be a great idea if the timescale of three years was replaced by one of ten years, and if this was made clear.

It cannot be done in three years. There will be a significant impact on the lives of public servants, as outlined by Senator McDowell. Families, careers and life expectations cannot be broken up just by saying that in three years all arrangements will be atomised. However, some things can be done. Locations can be chosen and a presence established, and there can be an insistence that all future recruitment be to a particular location. Staff can be invited to change and, after that, as with the Act of Union, a little mealladh, breabadh agus bagairt could be used to ensure they are edged in a particular direction.

It can be done but, at this stage, it seems like a good idea which is likely to go wrong. While most unions have been very restrained in their response, they have now been pushed into a position of opposition for the reasons which people heard on the doorsteps during the local election campaign in Dublin. Who can argue against the fears of ordinary people? The Government should consider a different timeline.

Senator Mansergh referred to IT and how it relates to the Bill and decentralisation. I regularly read the Sunday newspapers and noticed a significant advertisement in a newspaper last Sunday week regarding jobs in the public service. It advised readers to look at the www.publicjobs.ie website. Being the sad type that I am, and not having anything else to do on a Sunday evening, I tried to enter the website only to be told it was inaccessible. I tried again the following day but could not enter the site. As those who look after such websites are generally paid a lot of money, particularly if they do so for a Department, it was my intention to contact those in charge of the website. However, I forgot about it until I noticed a large colour advertisement in last Sunday’s newspapers, advising readers to check www.publicjobs.ie. I thought I would get the up-to-date version but, again, could not access the site despite trying several times. Action should be taken on this. Senator Mansergh made the case for flexibility in regard to the public service, as do I. However, this type of problem gives the public service a bad name. This morning, I again tried to access the website, which the Minister is paying for on our behalf, but could not get into it. I tried several different methods to access the site — on an AppleMac, a PC and with Internet Explorer — but could not do so. The Minister should confirm to the House that somebody does not get paid for this. The State paid for advertisements on consecutive Sundays which asked people to deal with an inaccessible website. Who is being paid for this? It is the type of situation which creates concerns regarding trust and confidence. How did it happen that nobody has checked this? It suggests that nobody is counting the hits on the website or the reaction to it.

The Minister of State said "a modern and flexible recruitment system" was important. I agree with his comments about the commissioners. I recently looked at some of the application forms, and I look forward to the added flexibility that will result from these proposed changes. I would like the Minister of State to confirm in his response that in all applications some space will be provided in which the applicant may sell himself for a public service job. People should not be restricted to the spaces provided in a designed application form, although the application form itself is a good idea.

In recent times I have been concerned about recruitment, which is a crucial aspect of management. One of the great problems with senior management in this country at present is that because most managers are not involved in recruitment or appointing people to positions, they are losing the skills required. They depend too much on recruitment agencies. In view of this I welcome the provision in the Bill for different groups within the public service to carry out their own recruitment. That is very important. However, as Senator McDowell said, there could be too many layers. We need to have trust and confidence in the system — there should not be any opportunity for people to interfere with it and upset the applecart. It is also important that we involve people in the appointments system.

Recently, much time has been taken up with the TELAC system of appointments. Assistant secretaries and Secretaries General have often been tied up for a week while they deal with appointments. I do not know whether there is any way around that, but I am not sure it is the best use of time. How is this regulated?

The question of a talent drain in the public service was mentioned. The number of people from the Department of Finance who find positions in financial institutions and related areas is not worrying in itself — it is a reflection of the talent within the public service and gives the lie to those who say otherwise. The problem is that it is a one-way street. There should be a way for people to come in as well as leave. That is one of the themes that emerged from Sustaining Progress. We should all be prepared to consider this.

This raises the issue of pension portability. Flexibility is important. I have been involved in a number of appointments in recent years and I have found the Department of Finance to be very inflexible when it comes to allowing people into the system from outside and particularly when it comes to the issue of pensions and so on. That is a difficulty. Many quangos and State-instituted bodies need people of the best quality who have experience in the private sector. I refer here to specific cases, not the general issue, which also needs to be addressed. It is important that people with expertise may be taken into the public sector and given contracts for a number of years with terms as attractive as those to be found in the private sector. There is a view in the Department of Finance that if a person is recruited into the civil or public service for a number of years he should not be offered the pension arrangements and security provisions that apply to those who are already within the system, including Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

We need to consider the issue of flexibility. When I hear about flexibility, I always remember the introduction of multi-annual budgeting by the Department of Finance. It was great until the Department itself had to apply it, when it suddenly became impossible. Somebody asked what was to be done with the money left over at the end of each year and the Department said it must be sent back, although it was still required that budgeting be done on a multi-annual basis. This is a similar problem. The Department of Finance is inclined to impose flexibility on everyone else without loosening its own straitjacket, despite the fact that some of the most talented people in the Civil Service are in that Department. Perhaps that is why they are where they are. This is not an ad hominem argument. I am simply pointing out that there is a culture that must be changed. It has been pointed out previously that the Department was not too keen to decentralise itself.

Senator McDowell might be interested to know that while in a provincial town recently, I met a senior person attached to a Department who admitted, after we had had libations and were speaking freely, that he was inspecting possible locations for the 75 jobs that were being decentralised to that town. All the talk was about how nobody would move and how it would be impossible to persuade anyone to live in these godforsaken places in rural Ireland, to use Senator McDowell's phrase. I asked what he thought of the town and he said he was very pleased and liked the locations he had seen around the town. I said that was a good start and asked him, off the record, how many applications he had received for the 75 positions. I will not mention the name of the official. He said there had been 220 top quality applications. There are people who will choose to turn their backs on Dublin, although that is an impossible thought to comprehend.

Mr. McDowell

I would go to Dingle myself.

Mr. O’Toole

If a Department was relocated to Dingle there would be plenty of applications. The points made by Senator McDowell are correct. Decentralisation will only work if it is done on a voluntary basis. It cannot work if it is done in the way proposed.

Mr. Leyden

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. He has been here so often that the House could be known as Parlon country.

Mr. O’Toole

Are we to call the Seanad Parlon country?

Mr. Leyden

That is good-humoured assurance.

Mr. Parlon

Is it a godforsaken place?

Mr. Leyden

No. As one who was out of public life for nine years, I can tell the Minister it is a very good place. When he hears the contributions today he will realise the depth of experience of the Members.

I commend the Minister of State, the Minister, Deputy McCreevy, the Taoiseach and the rest of the Cabinet on their brave decision to implement decentralisation. It is a radical move and one that could not have been taken before the advent of broadband and other initiatives in the area of communications. It would have been impossible to move a major Department to a rural area such as Knock or Roscommon when there was no proper telephone system, but that has all changed. This is a small country and there is no reason for keeping the whole Civil Service in Dublin. Out of approximately 33,000 public servants, just 10,300 are being decentralised. It is important to remember that it is a voluntary system.

In 1992, when I was a Deputy, I persuaded the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, to decentralise the General Register Office to Roscommon. About 50 jobs were provided in Roscommon. The move was completed about ten years later. The office is currently in temporary accommodation; a building is being erected to accommodate it. The process took time. There was tremendous opposition to the move from the former Taoiseach, Garrett FitzGerald. He led a campaign against the idea of moving the office outside Dublin, even though Roscommon is centrally located. The Minister of State was there to witness the first sod being turned for the new building last year and I look forward to seeing him at the official opening in the near future. About 200 public servants will be located in the building. The Government also made a decision to decentralise 230 jobs at the Land Registry Office to Roscommon. Roscommon can now be titled "The Registry Centre of Ireland: Land, property, deaths, births and marriages."

A total of 230 civil servants will come to Roscommon. This will revolutionise the town and create much activity on top of the developments that are taking place at present. Many multinationals are now coming to the area and there is much investment in apartments, houses and schools. The 230 workers will bring their families and the influx of children will mean the secondary schools can maintain their current level of teaching staff. The move is having a major knock-on effect on the town. I commend the work of the Minister of State in this regard. He is moving the project along as quickly as possible. It is difficult to predict when the process will be completed but criticism in this regard is simply an attempt to undermine the Government's decision.

The project will be completed as quickly as possible. I commend Mr. Philip Flynn, who is chairing this, on moving it forward. It is important that decentralisation will proceed on a voluntary basis. It would not be reasonable or fair to uproot families and move them to the country for the sake of it. Future recruitment will relate to the location of a Department, whether it is Roscommon, Galway or elsewhere.

This Bill will be enthusiastically accepted by this House because the current situation regarding recruitment to the public service is recognised. Every public representative would regard the Civil Service Commission as being above reproach. I understand the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission is the Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann. I am open to correction by the Minister on that. Having worked as a Minister in the Departments of Posts and Telegraphs, Transport, Health and Industry and Commerce, I am aware that this country is well served by the quality and integrity of the public service. I served with civil servants in Europe as a Minister. I have seen their negotiation skills. They are the envy of every country in Europe. We have Foreign Affairs officials, our trade board and trade officials and other officials working in America and elsewhere. They are people of integrity who work extremely hard. They work closely with Ministers. They also advise them and work with decisions made by the Cabinet. We have a very loyal, trustworthy, well-qualified and well-educated Civil Service. Nothing in the Bill undermines or detracts from their position because the Civil Service Commission will remain intact.

I am not as happy with the Local Appointments Commission as I am with the Civil Service Commission. Perhaps the Minister of State would elaborate on its method of making appointments. From my experience it seems that when the Local Appointments Commission is recruiting to the higher grades, a manager, former manager or senior council official sits on the recruitment board. I came across a situation where an official was attempting to transfer from a particular county to Roscommon. Each time she applied for a transfer the manager from the county in which she worked was on the recruitment board, and each time she was turned down because the manager did not want to lose her. That must change.

The vocational education committees are wonderful organisations. The membership of VECs includes public representatives. I was once a member of a VEC. However, a qualified teacher must now canvass for appointment to the local VEC. That was the case up to a few months ago. I do not know whether there has been any change in that regard. It is not the Minister's responsibility. However, I regard that as offensive. One should apply and be accepted on one's merits, not on the basis of canvassing a political party. My experience of that type of arrangement is that one good deed is done in Roscommon in exchange for another in Louth or Meath or elsewhere. People get on the telephone to each other to discuss candidates on the basis of knowing the candidate and knowing he or she is from a family that has been involved in politics for years. The members of the recruitment board go into the interview knowing who they are going to appoint, and those who are not in the circle need not apply.

I have raised this matter because there has been a long silence about it. It reminds me of the appointment of rate collectors, a very important job in the 1950s. The appointment was based mainly on how much the candidate could give a councillor. Cheques were passed around and the appointment was made. There was a case in Roscommon where there were two applicants for the job and the chairman of the Fine Gael branch, who happened to be a clergyman, decided that his nephew was to get the job. He chaired the meeting and he put his nephew's name twice into one box so that there was a good chance that the name would be drawn. That was despicable and I am glad it has changed. It is right that the Bill provides for flexibility in appointments relating to the Garda Síochána and other organisations.

The Government is very much in favour of the Bill and I fully support it. Both The Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy McCreevy, are a good team in the Department of Finance. I hope the points I made regarding other appointments will be investigated by the Department with a view to introducing legislation to change the method of making appointments to the VECs.

Mr. P. Burke

I welcome the Minister of State. It is inevitable that there should be some change regarding public service and Civil Service appointments.

The Bill provides for the establishment of a committee and a commission. Members of this House or those nominated to stand as candidates for the European Parliament, the Seanad or the Dáil are prohibited from sitting on the commission. I note that the Ceann Comhairle is a member of the commission. How can the Minister reconcile that with these provisions since the Ceann Comhairle is nominated by a political party?

The Bill is a very complicated measure for appointing people to the public service and to the Civil Service and it will create a bonanza for recruitment agencies who will be able to act on behalf of local authorities, health boards, the Civil Service and so on. The Bill also provides that candidates for a position may have to pay a fee. The recruitment agency may charge a fee to both the candidates and the recruiting body for whom it is acting. These complicated provisions broaden out the recruitment of civil and public servants while keeping them at arm's length.

I have no problem with tightening up some areas. However, a retrograde step was taken in the local government sector when Better Local Government was being introduced. County managers are allowed to set up interview boards for the recruitment of directors of services and for recruitment to other specific areas to the detriment of the local authority system. There are deep divisions within local authorities. Half of the members of the workforce are happy because they were promoted but the other half are unhappy because they were not. I hope a similar scenario will not develop when this Bill is passed.

I envisage that county managers, CEOs of health boards and so on will operate different standards. In some cases local authorities will themselves recruit under licence while in other areas similar positions will be processed through recruitment agencies. That will create a double standard and it is a retrograde step. There will also be double standards regarding some positions within a specific local authority. Some positions will be filled by the county manager under licence while a similar position will be filled by a recruitment agency. That is not an even playing pitch. Heretofore, a local appointments commission was set up under the auspices of the Civil Service. Whether we liked it or not, everyone knew what was in store for them. Under the Bill different standards will apply as there will be many different recruitment agencies. There will be no even standard no matter how good the procedures put in place by the commission and the committee.

A good system is in place although there is no doubt that it needed to be tweaked a little. The Minister should have strengthened the procedures that were in place for public service appointments, rather than take the approach set out in the Bill. He has taken a complicated route where he will be granting many licences to different people under the direction of a commission to be set up. There is, therefore, a big responsibility on the commission to set the ground work for those that are granted licences to recruit the kind of people who did a great service to this country last week on the European stage.

It is very important that the procedures to be put in place are completely independent. It will be difficult for them to be as independent as we wish because they will lead to a plethora of recruitment agencies. How will they all operate under the guidance of the commission? I am not sure it will work as the Minister intends. There is much time left to modify the Bill even further. It needs to be done. The Minister should ascertain how satisfied are the employees of local authorities with promotion and recruitment under Better Local Government over the last few years. He should then take it from there.

Dr. M. Hayes

I welcome the Minister. I join those who have paid tribute to the work of the Civil Service Commissioners and local appointments commissioners over the years. They have done sterling service for this country in establishing probity and integrity of procedures, and in ensuring the quality and the independence of the Civil Service. Like Senator Leyden, I also remember the rich literature and the even richer folklore about the appointment of rate collectors when local authorities had the power to do so.

I wonder whether all of this is needed and whether a great deal might not have been done by modernising and streamlining the structures and procedures that exist at present. There is nothing to stop provision being made for the commissions to use agencies and consultancy advice. However, I applaud the objectives that the Minister has in mind and I welcome the insistence that standards will be maintained. There are difficulties with local recruitment when decentralisation to the extent envisaged takes place. It is not an argument against recruiting large numbers of staff locally, but it can lead to a degree of inbreeding. It can also lead to the development of local patronage, which is a danger. If agency A is appointed by the licence holder to do work in a particular area, that should not mean that people who are looking for a job in that area sign up with agency A to the detriment of others.

There is a difficulty where an external adviser is needed, particularly regarding health appointments. One can suddenly realise that the external adviser is the member of a very select club of people. A whole series of interlocking confidences and obligations exist that do not appear on the surface of the documents.

I hope the Minister encourages the possibility of lateral entry at different levels, particularly for gardaí, so that everyone does not simply come through the same hole at the bottom of the pyramid. It is a wise precaution that the commission is to be determined ex officio. However, the people appointed to the commission are very busy with other jobs. They therefore need to be underpinned by the capacity to monitor what is happening on the ground. They need to be supported by people who can do an audit across the system every year to ensure that quality is maintained. For instance, they can ensure that a different standard is not maintained from one part of the country to another, or from one Department to another.

I hope that the integrity of the public service is maintained. There is a danger that if people are recruited to a particular Department they become members of that team for life. One of the things we need to aim at in joined-up government is the ability of people to think outside the departmental frame and to move from Department to Department. The integrity and reputation of the Civil Service is something that we have all come to value. It is a great prize and no matter what is done the Minister should seek to preserve that. This will not happen unless there is constant monitoring and commissioners are put in a position to ensure that standards are being maintained and that there is consistency across the system.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Parlon)

I thank all Senators for their contributions to the debate on this Bill. Without attempting to be patronising, they were much more thoughtful and positive than in the Dáil. Despite the fact that I attempted to avoid decentralisation as an issue, the Senators rightly identified it as being part of this. I have no problem with that, but I did feel that some of the debate in the Dáil centred almost entirely on decentralisation. I do not know whether that was done to keep the issue to the forefront or to avoid attention to the Bill. The two issues are linked, of course, but not entirely as the Bill stands on its own merit.

I congratulate Senator Higgins on his recent election to Europe. We will certainly miss him around here. I am not too sure how he will combine the two jobs for the moment——

Mr. Leyden

He has not gone yet.

Mr. Parlon

I congratulate him all the same.

Mr. Higgins

I thank the Minister of State.

Mr. Parlon

Senator Higgins wondered if the current system was not broken then why fix it. He also referred to the issues that I raised concerning speed and flexibility. If anything has been around for 80 years, there is a general consensus that it is time for change, not for its own sake but in order to move forward. I reiterate what I said in the Lower House. The 1999 PricewaterhouseCoopers strategic review of the Office of the Civil Service and Local Appointments Commission pointed out that the regime operated under the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956, which vests all significant recruitment functions in the legal personages of the commissioners. That was a suitable approach at a time when there was little difficulty in attracting candidates to public service employment. The numbers to be employed were small in relative terms and generic recruitment to particular grade levels rather than to individual Departments or offices was the order of the day.

However, the generalist, service-wide recruitment regime set up by the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956 has not had the necessary flexibility to be responsive to organisational needs, which have evolved over time. In particular, competitions were run too infrequently to attract and retain quality candidates in a buoyant employment market and enable a targeted and timely response to the filling of vacancies and new posts.

The evaluation of the process through the strategic management initiative in the Civil Service carried out by PA Consulting in 2002 concluded that the Civil Service is a more effective organisation than a decade ago. However, the evaluation also concluded that implementation remained incomplete and that accelerated progress, particularly in human resources management, was required. In particular, PA Consulting recommended that the Civil Service should have the discretion to recruit directly from the database. In that context, it said that it supported the Bill. It also noted the need to ensure that standards be maintained in the course of any delegation of authority to balance that requirement with enhanced flexibility and local decision-making. That balance is adhered to in the Bill. Like Senator Maurice Hayes, most Senators were extremely keen to discuss the importance of probity and public trust in the Civil Service. We have gone to every length to ensure that is so. It will be essential to the credibility and work of the Civil Service that the public service has that trust. If that is not to the fore in recruitment, it will not be to the fore afterwards.

Regarding decentralisation, which was raised by most Senators, I assure Senator Higgins and others that it will go ahead. The programme announced on budget day will be delivered and the entire Civil Service is working towards that end. The Bill will support the newly decentralised offices by allowing local managers to recruit staff locally. That option has been offered in the Bill. Previously there was only one option and one had to recruit centrally. Now local chief executives of Departments or the Garda Commissioner are generally the head of the Department and that is still a very restricted and select group of people. They will have the option, if they so wish, to recruit locally. It may make a great deal of sense for a Department in County Donegal. I will not repeat Senator McDowell's comment. As someone generally so enlightened in the House, making very positive contributions, I am sure that he did not mean his reference to "God awful places down the country". That is a very unenlightened approach and he should travel a little more outside the capital to see that the dingy pubs to which he referred are quite attractive places now. I am sure that Senator Moylan would refer to some of the most popular places in his own village of Banagher, which used to be referred to as dingy but now attracts visitors from all over the globe.

Regarding the common sense involved in recruiting ten civil servants in Donegal or Knock, in a centralised situation, of the ten people who might be selected, two might be from Donegal, three from Dublin, two from Kerry and perhaps one from Knock. That would not make any sense since they would throw their hands up in the air and say that they had no intention of joining the Civil Service in Knock and wanted to go to Dublin or wherever. The facility and flexibility that it will bring will be extremely positive.

Senator Mansergh referred to delivering on decentralisation. Very intense negotiations are going on behind the scenes all the time. Civil Service unions will come out and make their case, trying to get a better deal for themselves. As someone with past experience of lobby groups, I am very familiar with that. I canvassed in Dublin north and south during the local elections and came across people on the doorsteps who were in specific situations. Their spouses, they or their children had no intention of moving and decentralisation is voluntary, which in some cases will probably mean that, if the whole Department moves, the job the person was doing may not be there in future. However, their jobs will be there in the Civil Service. The grade and level of remuneration will remain the same.

I was shocked to hear Senator O'Toole's comments on his experiences of the CAF website. That was certainly not my experience. I am not the most computer-literate person, but I logged onto it several times and had no difficulty with it. I will check that out very quickly. I hope that the Senator was using the right name. If true, it would give a very wrong impression of the interest if people cannot get on the site.

Senator Quinn raised the issue of the loss of collective or corporate memory in Departments which decentralise. I assure the Senator that any restaffing of Departments and offices will be the first priority in the programme's implementation. I acknowledge that the process of "sitting with Nelly", as he called it, is very much the core method by which an organisation trains its members. There will be a period in the massive project of moving 10,000 civil servants to 53 locations when there is some double staffing. There may be a short period of reduced efficiency, but the previous experience of decentralisation has shown extremely clearly that new people in new jobs show great enthusiasm. Whatever interim drop-off there is in delivery is quickly restored with a bonus and that will certainly be the case here.

That is not to say that the Government or the Department of Finance underestimates the challenges. On the people issues in particular, there will have to be a great deal of discourse, dialogue and listening. The most important thing of all is that it is voluntary and that people should not feel obliged. I was listening to "Morning Ireland" this morning, on which there was a discussion about Luas. An interesting article on the last tram that ran compared Dublin then and now. One of the commentators said that Dublin is now a city of 2 million people. It does not make sense that in a city of 2 million people we cannot afford the flexibility to allow just 10,000 employees of a very substantial Civil Service to relocate around the country. I agree with the comments about decentralisation that it is a very positive move for the whole country and for the civil servants. It must be implemented correctly and the Government and the Department of Finance will ensure that is the case.

There were some concerns about the issue of private recruitment agencies being involved. Human resources is now a very highly developed science and most Departments have a very specialised human resources manager. There are substantial skills in private recruitment agencies and there is an option in the Bill to make use of those skills if one so wishes. I also know from my short experience of being involved in a Department, the Office of Public Works, that those within one have their own skills and may feel that they can do the job better than the private body. Very often that is the case. I admire that in them and they are prepared to be benchmarked with a private body on how they do their jobs. If staff in any Department feel that they can do a job better than a private recruitment agency, that is the option to have. It is an important option to include in the Bill.

I believe it was Senator Paddy Burke who referred to the provision to charge people for applying for a job, which could be an option for a private recruitment agency. That provision was also included in the Civil Service Commissioners Act 1956. It was used for the brief period of a year in the 1980s. We insisted on including it to maintain that flexibility. However, the intention to charge for recruitment is not there. There is also provision in the Act that, if there were a charge, the money would not go to the local recruitment agency or Department that was recruiting but to central funds. Thereby, any incentive that a private recruitment agency or a local agency might have to charge is gone.

Regarding the other issues raised, Senator McDowell broadly welcomed the Bill. He had some concerns about how it might apply to decentralisation. I referred to his lack of appreciation of some of the provincial towns.

Senator O'Toole referred to a chance meeting with a senior civil servant in a town in rural Ireland who told the Senator that there were more than 200 applications for 75 vacancies. The central applications facility will report shortly and we will then get a clear indication of the interest in decentralisation among civil servants. Previous surveys gave a negative and unreliable impression of the likely response. People are considering their options and quality of life is an important factor. There will be a substantial "churn", which is a rather unfortunate term in use within the Civil Service to represent the take-up of decentralisation. Of the more than 10,000 civil servants who move, many will change Departments and this will provide them with a new enthusiasm for their work.

Senator Leyden outlined some of the shortcomings of public service recruitment practice and Senator Maurice Hayes was in agreement on that point. There are some outrageous stories of political patronage in the past, which we are glad to leave behind, and there are sufficient safeguards in the Bill to prevent any similar occurrences in the future.

I disagree with Senator Paddy Burke's contention regarding the complexity of the system and that it will represent a bonanza for private recruitment agencies. Most Departments and State bodies will continue to recruit centrally except where there is difficulty in a particular location or a vacancy requires a specific skill set. Even in those limited circumstances, recruitment will be mostly done internally rather than farming it out to private recruitment agencies, not least because of the cost factor for which provision may not be factored into departmental budgets. That will be at the discretion of the Department heads.

I have addressed most of the issues. I thank the Senators for their contributions and I note the generally positive response. The Bill will not be enacted before the end of this session but I look forward to its implementation.

Question put and agreed to.

An Cathaoirleach

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Mr. Dardis

Next Tuesday.

Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 6 July 2004.

Sitting suspended at 1.25 p.m. and resumed at 2 p.m.

Seanad Éireann debate - Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004

Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) Bill 2003: Second Stage.

Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 30 Jun 2004